“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, through its Grand Challenges Explorations initiative, [on Wednesday] announced over 100 new grants of $100,000 each to support innovative global health and development proposals that have the potential to unlock transformative, life-saving solutions in the developing world,” a foundation press release reports. “Additionally, the Gates Foundation announced additional funding of up to $1 million each for six existing Grand Challenges Explorations projects to enable grantees to continue to advance their ideas towards global impact,” the press release adds (5/9).

Among the more than 100 winners “are proposals to engineer corn into an edible vaccine, use unmanned drones to deliver vaccines to remote areas, and create an electronic tattoo to monitor the health of pregnant women and their fetuses,” the Seattle Times writes (Doughton, 5/9). In a separate article, the Associated Press/Seattle Times writes, “Over the past four years, the foundation has funded more than 600 projects from more than 20,000 proposals submitted by researchers in 44 countries,” adding, “Foundation officers consider the money a kind of start-up fund for the future of global health and development research” (Blankinship, 5/8).